The strength of the tendency of children (aged 4 1/2 to 7 1/2 years) to give phenomenist reading of neutral questions about object properties was investigated. Phenomenist answers decreased with age, and social dominance and conversational context affected answers. (SKC)

Seventy percent of the children (non-conservers in length) who had to respond to length equality as opposed to inequality made the correct invariance judgment and could characterize their choices in invariance language, while still failing the standard verbal task in which the experimenter used such phrases. (Author/SJL)

Two experiments tested whether children fail to make transitive inferences because they forget the premises. Children did not justify incorrect inferences by incorrect premises. Results between nontransitive and transitive inferers parallelled similar studies with nonconserver- conserver dyads and were viewed as reinforcing the commonality between…

Among children ranging in age from 5.5 to 7.5 years, there was no evidence that social conflict engineered in dyads composed of a conserver and a nonconserver stimulated cognitive change. It is concluded that the ineffectiveness of symmetrical social conflict is consistent with Piaget's conception of nonconservers. (RH)